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What Does the Future Hold for the Legion of Christ?
Exclusive interview with its acting general director, Father Sylvester Heereman.
Legionary Father Sylvester Heereman was born on Sept. 10, 1974, in Bad Neustadt an der Saale, Germany. He joined the novitiate of the Legion of Christ in Germany in 1994, made his first religious vows in 1996 and his perpetual profession in 1999.
He was territorial secretary of Italy from 2001 to 2003 and a member of the formation staff of the Center for Higher Studies in Rome while studying theology. Ordained a priest on Dec. 23, 2006, Father Heereman was named territorial director for Germany in 2007. Not yet 40 years old, he was appointed vicar general of the beleaguered congregation on Feb. 16, 2012, by Cardinal Velasio de Paolis.
Cardinal de Paolis was appointed apostolic delegate to the Legionaries of Christ by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, after alleged sexual abuses regarding the Legion's founder, Father Marcial Maciel, became public and were acknowledged by the congregation.
Since Oct. 15, 2012, Father Heereman has been the acting general director of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, the lay movement of the Legion. Rome correspondent Edward Pentin interviewed the general director Nov. 13 about the congregation's disgraced founder, the upcoming general chapter meeting and the future of the Legionaries of Christ.
What is the current situation in the Legionaries of Christ, and how are you planning for the general chapter in January?
The general chapter has three main tasks, which can only be finished at the chapter. First, it will have to elect a new government. Secondly, we'll have to discuss and present to the Holy See the new constitutions, and that's after a three-year process, which involved the participation of all Legionaries in the revision process. Lastly, we'll have to sum up the experience of the last eight years, the whole crisis with the founder and how we've been living it and overcoming it and where we stand now with regards to the whole institutional experience.
So those will be the three main topics of the chapter. Right now, the provincials are preparing their reports to submit to the chapter, containing how those different issues impact their areas of responsibility. We are doing the same thing here: trying to sum up the main events of the last years and the things that have already been changed through the interventions of the apostolic delegate. We intend to make visible to everybody what has already been changed and decisions that still need to be taken.
So the general situation among the Legionaries is one of expectation, both in the sense of joyful expectation and also in a "let's get this over with" sort of way. This will surely be a fruitful and blessed moment, but like all things in life, there's apprehension about what's going to happen. So there are mixed feelings.
Some argue that, in view of the extent of Father Maciel's misdeeds, those closest to him must have known.
Personally, I'm too young to have really lived those years. When I joined, he was already 74. But, certainly, that was the mistake of an institution, because an institution needs to control its leaders. There was really no institutional control of his whereabouts because of naive trust all those years.
How much was due to the constitution and ethos of the Legion — that you weren't allowed to criticize the head, and he had an authoritarian mystique about him that prevented legitimate criticism?
That's probably part of the mix. There was a very strong deference towards the superiors in general, much more so to the founder. And we always trusted, thinking that an aspect of charity is to not speak badly of people, and that was applied also very much to the superiors. That's probably part of it. But I don't think that's the main cause.
Then there's the question of knowing about something, but [something] which you're not responsible for. What do you do with that knowledge when you're not above that person? That's a very difficult thing. I'm sure some knew some aspects and just didn't know what to do about it.
The old constitutions had more than 800 elements, and the new one will have approximately 200. What would you point to as key changes that illustrate the significance of these changes?
The basic principle of the constitutions' revision was to leave in only the essential elements, the major principles, but allow for adaptation, flexibility and creativity in the living of it. The old constitutions were in the spirit of the old canon law and maybe also influenced by the founder's mentality of tending to be too controlling, to kind of impose a certain way of sanctity.
The old constitutions were very detailed, so the Holy See said: "Identify what are the essential principles, and take out everything that may be licit and valid but should be in secondary codes or books or shouldn't even be regulated."
So the new constitutions have principles of formation but not concrete methods. They have the principles of administration but not the concrete processes and methods. They have the general duties of the superior but not the way he should implement them.
On the content side, the new constitution is updated in the whole area of exercise of authority, which was one of the big areas that the Holy Father, after the apostolic visitation (a Vatican investigation of the institution conducted in 2009), indicated.
As you mentioned, there was a strong authoritarian element in our vision, which is one of the things that has changed the most.
What do you say to the argument that this is such a unique case, in that this is a congregation solely founded by Father Marcial Maciel and so closely tied to him that it needs to start from scratch?
In the end, whether there is a real charism is not our call, but the Church's call, and that's been: Yes, there is a charism.
Benedict XVI, when he named the apostolic delegate in 2010 and spoke about the real call that is there — the authentic core of the charism that needs to be preserved — that's the Church's call. It's also my experience that there's something real here, and that's what we're trying to build on, while, at the same time, having to face up to that contradiction. Precisely in that contradiction there's also a message that maybe we haven't fully understood, and maybe we never will. Certainly, it's helped us to grow in humility. For me, it has meant not putting trust in myself, my perfection or in presenting a perfect way of being Christian, but to know that human life is extremely contradictory, that there's so much brokenness in this world.
We're called to bring the Gospel right there, kind of what Pope Francis has been saying: that there's no life so destroyed that God would be separated from it.
A 2010 communiqué from the Holy See Press Office mentioned three main elements should be looked at, one of which was clarification of the charism. Some say they're not sure what the charism has been; others have said it just seems to be fundraising. What is your response to that accusation?
[Laughs] We haven't been doing very well, have we?
Let me just say one thing about the theory of charisms. One of the fruits of this experience is that we've all had to go deeper into what the nature of a charism is in a congregation or in a group of people. Pope John Paul II, in Vita Consecrata, says that at the core of a charism there is a certain aspect of the Gospel. Obviously, we're all called to live the whole Gospel, but the different charisms of the Church live and show the Gospel from one aspect of Christ's mystery. That aspect of the mystery of Christ inspires a spirituality, a way of relating to God — a mission, a way of relating to the world and what you're called to do — and inspires a type of community. You need all four aspects to understand the charism.
In our case, at the core of the charism is the Christ of public life, who says the Kingdom of God is at hand: the message that the love of God has come into the world and is about to reign because it has power over death, sin, and is stronger than anything else.
So we look at Christ and our spirituality as a relationship with that living Christ, who teaches that message, shows it, and from that perspective, we strive to live the whole Gospel, love the Church as he did, love Mary as he did, but with that perspective that the power of the love of God is the Kingdom and that that love of God is witnessed by giving our life. The spirituality part is very simple — it's about a relationship with Christ.
The mission is to let us draw ourselves to the mission of proclaiming that truth, very specifically trying to do something Christ did, involving other people in the mission of Christ. By calling and forming apostles, in our apostolic mission, we do many things. We work with youth, families and schools, but the common idea in all of them is to awaken in Christians the call to the apostolate, to let them be involved in Christ's mission.
And then the community — and that's a very important aspect that may not be well known in public opinion. Our charism is not just the Legion of Christ, but there's a wider spiritual family, Regnum Christi. So that charism inspires a type of community that has different families in it — the Legionaries of Christ, consecrated men and women of Regnum Christi, laypeople who live in the world — that together try to serve the Church from where they are, to serve that charism to proclaim the Kingdom of Christ, the victory of God's love, through their testimony, but also through concrete apostolic action, by becoming apostles themselves together. And that togetherness of the community is one of the aspects that puts us in continuity with this whole development of the Church in the last 100 years — the lay apostolate. It's not just the clergy, but we're all the people of God and trying to fulfill his mission.
How many priestly ordinations have you had in the midst of these challenges, and how many priests have you lost?
The number of Legionary priests who have left the congregation from 2010 to Nov. 14, 2013, is 84 — 33 in 2010, 18 in 2011, nine in 2012 and 24 so far this year. The number of priests ordained those same years is up: 60, 62, 49 and around 30 expected for this year. Figures for religious in formation — those who are not yet priests — who left the Legion are: 147, 169 and 123. Data for 2013 is not yet available, but my guess is that it is about 100.
Most of these requests to leave the Legion are a consequence of the natural process of discernment of a vocation. Some had to do with the crisis and the renewal process.
Our latest stats sent to the Holy See correspond to Dec. 31, 2012: bishops, 3; priests, 953; religious and novices, 932; students in minor seminary, 945. At the moment, we have 109 houses in 22 countries. Members include 38 different nationalities.
Father Deomar de Guedes, a general counselor and senior figure in the Legion, left recently. It seemed he wanted to leave completely but was persuaded not to. What were the reasons behind this?
He was very specific in saying he wasn't leaving definitively. He asked for exclaustration but not incardination in the diocese. I myself was surprised. He was a friend, and I would have preferred him to stay. He's been a good element, very active and passionate about the renewal. He was clear in his letter, and when he spoke to the brothers here, he said that he's leaving because he's tired. Why is he tired? Because he feels it's not going fast enough. But he's not leaving because he doesn't have hope for the reform, but because he doesn't have the strength to be living under the pressure of seeing things that maybe he would like to do and the time has not yet come.
Because Father Maciel went on for so many years deceiving people, does that imply incompetence, and if so, what mechanisms have been put in place to stop that from happening again?
More than incompetence. It was probably naiveté, and that is hard to imagine if you've not lived it. It doesn't come naturally to question and control your general superior, and much less your founder.
The concrete mechanism is to control the personal spending of the general director, transparency of his agenda — Where does he go? What does he do? — and then the constant cooperation with the council. We've woken up from the view that just because he's a superior, he's a holy man. Nobody thinks like that anymore.
Is there going to be a clear break from Maciel's past? What will be the new vision?
Personally, I think the whole challenge is between continuity and newness.
The newness will be very evident in the constitution, because it's much more essential. The way authority is exercised today is very different from the way it was.
The whole role of the founder is now very different. Already in 2010, the general director made a clear statement that he is not a model, and that even as a founder, whatever he proposed as a founder, is under the Church's discernment. So we will not be referring to him as the infallible source of our charism. All those elements change what we understand of ourselves, also the fact we understand now much better than before that the charism is the property of the Church, not the founder. But every generation of Legionaries is the bearer of that charism, and it's the current generation who needs to understand how it is to be lived today and to live that in constant dialogue with the Church.
Some say you haven't really acknowledged the suffering caused in the past. How true is this?
I don't think it's true. [Former general director] Father [Alvaro] Corcuera apologized several times, and then on March 25, 2010, there was a statement signed by the general director, counselors and all the provincials recognizing the basic elements.
At the same time, I agree that it is probably not enough. The chapter will have to go back over that and reaffirm, maybe in a clearer and stronger way, those issues. I think we also need to accept the fact that you never do enough to reach out to the people who suffered.
We need to be grateful for the ones who have spoken up, who for many years we didn't believe — we just didn't believe them. They insisted, and we insisted back; and, surely, we added suffering to their suffering with that. And so we need to recognize that and be grateful for their courage to speak up.
As far as recognizing the founder's sins and misdeeds, I would also say that among Legionaries and Regnum Christi members in the whole world, this is not a taboo at all. Everyone is aware of the essential elements.
To write an independent institutional history of that will have to happen, and we will cooperate with that when the time comes. For now, our responsibility is to secure the archives and create a system, making sure history can be written when the time comes.
Have those who were closest to him — former Vicar General Father Luis Garza, Father Corcuera, former U.S. territorial director Father Anthony Bannon — been fully questioned about how much they knew?
We know their testimonies, but they're from recent history. Our founder began the congregation in 1941. They come into the picture with responsibilities after he was in his 60s and 70s.
In our culture, he was the founder, a holy man; and, obviously, they're older than me. When they started to take responsibility as formators or working with him, like Father Garza — he was already the unquestionable founder — and they say, I believe them absolutely, because of the way the founder lived, that they did not know. More so, Father Garza was instrumental in bringing things to light in the years after the new governing council came in 2005. I know there's lots of distrust towards them, but, personally, I believe what they say. They didn't know about the double life.
Are any of the people who were closest to Father Maciel still in positions of leadership?
Father Garza is territorial director of the United States — so yes, because no one has ever accused him of anything concrete. One of the important principles in this is also that Cardinal de Paolis made it clear from the beginning: "Any allegation I will investigate, but I can't go about investigating people just like that." It's both against canon and civil law. So they have never been accused of any misdeeds.
What gives you optimism and hope for the future of the Legion of Christ?
This whole process of purification and changing the mentality in areas where it is necessary is not done pushing a button. It's a process. I think, in general, the vast majority of Legionaries have been able to get into this whole process of opening our minds, of accepting criticism. But there's obviously still tension about those things, about the founder, what should change or not change.
I'm very confident that, in general, we're walking together and precisely learning to live that tension, which is a new thing for us. The founder seemed strong and kind of infallible. We're not used to seeing that this wasn't true, so you can see that as a positive thing. But, still, it's not easy.
We have struggles agreeing on the essentials, but this is normal. Having said that, I think we're moving forward, and I trust that — especially a chapter where you bring priests from all over the world, all kinds of generations, experiences, also a prayerful atmosphere — will certainly be a blessed moment.
We will also be able to give a strong message of identity and also of renewal to the whole congregation, and that will help us. We will make sure everyone has read up on the founder and all of that, but also be able to turn the page.


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The "BB's" of Sacred Knowledge
By Don Carroll
The Edgar Cayce readings and related correspondences add up to over 49,000 pages of material that runs the gamut from the celestial to the terrestrial, the spiritual to the material, and from the mundane to the arcane. One might expect to discover new and exciting symbols for sacred knowledge such as the Kundalini or the Caduceus, but I did not expect to read about the double B.
When the mind of Edgar Cayce brought the information from the source, the Akashic Records and humanity's subconscious, it often required that he explain words and concepts beyond our three-dimensions in a way that we might comprehend. At times, the information and imagery from the readings seems clear and concise. At other times, it required the reader to meditate on the information and allow the meaning to unfold.
The readings often suggested symbols be used by individuals for a variety of reasons. The reading below describes a symbol with two B's that would likely have appeared similar to the caduceus.
Then the name was Ai-Ellaiin, and the hieroglyphics will be found to be marked as these: The Ibex (the bird of same), the hornheaded man, the Ibex turned in the opposite direction, the sacred bull of Ipis [?], the hooded man as of the Ethiopian people, the cross, the serpent (upright), the staff with the symbol (that should be the symbol of the entity throughout its experience) as the B's turned toward each other—or one upright with two loops on either side of same, with the serpent head two ways from the top of same.
This should be the symbol ever of the entity, as should be the scarab with same; one as the amulet and the other either as a pin or about the body; as well as the lapis linguis also would bring to the entity much, if it were worn about the body, keeping low the fires of passion—from materiality that there may be greater mental and spiritual development of this entity in the experience.
(Edgar Cayce Reading 559-7, 6-year-old girl)
There has been much discussion and controversy over the date of construction of the Great Pyramid. Mainstream Egyptologists place its construction at approximately 2500 BCE, but there are several researchers that suggest it is much older, and date the pyramid closer to 10,000 BCE. The Edgar Cayce readings were very specific about the dates, placing the building of the Great Pyramid from 10,490 to 10,390 BCE.
The caduceus has become a common symbol for medicine, especially in North America. It is the staff carried by the mythological god Hermes (Greek) or Mercury (Roman) and is depicted with two entwined serpents. These snakes are often shown with wings, indicative of the Kundalini energy that rises from the base of the spine. These symbols represent communication with a higher self or God.
By correlating this reading with others, I was fascinated to discover that the B symbols were used in two more readings:
…And as a symbol of the activities in that sojourn, as in those when in Poona the entity made for the greater increase, would be the BB; or, as it would be termed from that period, the sacred serpent and the fire of same should be the emblems of the entity and worn about the body; something that is of fine linen but of blue should be upon the flesh of the body at all periods, for its consecration and its dedication of its activities. (Edgar Cayce Reading 812-1)
(Q) What are my symbols?
(A) The dorna (?) and the staff; the dorna (?) being the BB as would be put together, representing the people that adhered to the faiths in Palestine that were of another race; the staff, of course, being the shepherd crook. (Edgar Cayce Reading 537-1)
Another reading goes on to explain the symbols of the serpent and the rod. The following is from a reading given for Edgar Cayce to understand and interpret his dream.
(Q) [Edgar Cayce's dream:] Saw a little mound of dead leaves. As I looked it began to move off. I thought there must be a snake under it. I picked up a stick and went towards it. By that time the mound was on the side of an embankment, almost on the edge, and the snake poked his head out and said, "Don't hit me—and I won't bother you any more."
(A) As is visioned in the dream, the position of the body and the acts at the time indicated the clearing of the system of those things that are vile…from body, so that…through the activities of others—that are indicated by the mound, or prominence as in front of body —with this arising will come out of same that as indicated by the serpent, which indicates the wisdom of all things being known to others as pertain to their proper relationships and understandings, and while temptations arise—as through the serpent—with the use of the rod, or staff, as is of life, as is represented by those that are, or were, the leaders in each dispensation, of activity, may be used in love and truth, budding to like itself, as in the hands of many. So may it make for the overcoming of that which would hinder, or injure in any way, and bring about that peace as sought by the tempter in the vision. (Edgar Cayce Reading 294-136)
The beauty of the language and expressions of the symbols from Edgar Cayce's own dream as well as the BB readings remind us that there is valuable information hidden in plain sight. We can apply the new understanding gained from the symbols in the readings to better understand our own dreams.
Don Carroll had a career of over thirty years in the Fire/Rescue service. After receiving his degree in Fire Science, he worked as a district chief for a battalion, an operations company officer, an emergency medical technician, a paramedic, and a teacher at the regional fire academy. While raising a family, he pursued the greater meaning of life, reading materials on Edgar Cayce and attending A.R.E. conferences, seminars, tours, and retreats. He is the author of the article The Cayce Cubit and the Kundalini in the Oct.-Dec. issue of Venture Inward Magazine, available in the online member-only section.

subset: commoncrawl


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October 17, 2012 + An Explanation of the Offering at the Proskomedia Service
An Explanation of the Bread, Wine, and Water Offering at the Proskomedia Service Before the Divine Liturgy
by St. Germanus of Constantinople
from his commentary On the Divine Liturgy, translated by Paul Meyendorff, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984, p. 71.
The bread of offering [offered by our prosfora bakers], which is purified, signifies the superabundant riches of the goodness of our God, because the Son of God became man and gave Himself as an offering and oblation in ransom and atonement for the life and salvation of the world He assumed the entirety of human nature, except for sin. He offered Himself as first-fruits and chosen whole burnt-offering to the God and Father on behalf of the human race, as is written: 'I am the bread which came down from heaven," and 'He who eats this bread will live for ever' (Jn. 6:51). About this the Prophet Jeremiah says: 'Come, let us place a stake in his bread' (11:19 LXX), point to the wood of the cross nailed to His body.
The piece which is cut out [of the loaf] with the lance [by the priest] signifies that 'Like a sheep He is led to the slaughter, and like a lamb that before its shearer is dumb' (cf. Is. 54:7).
The wine and the water are the blood and the water which came out from His side as the prophet says: 'Bread will be given him, and water to drink' (Is. 33:16). For this lance corresponds to the lance which pierced Christ on the cross.
The bread and the chalice are really and truly the memorial of the mystical supper at which Christ, having taken the bread and wine, said: 'Take, eat, and drink, all of you, this is my body and blood.' This shows that He made us communicants of His death, His resurrection, and His glory.
The Holy Prophet Hosea
As we celebrate the memory of Thy Prophet Hosea, O Lord, through him we beseech Thee to save our souls.
Kontakion - Tone 8
Initiated by divine illumination, thou wast deemed worthy of the lofty gift of prophecy and foretoldest of the promise of grace, O Prophet. O Hosea, since thou dwellest in God's glory now, do thou rescue from all manner of adversity us who cry to thee: Rejoice, thou vessel of grace divine.


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Event: Exhibition (permanent) County: Kent 'Valour' - A permanent display of our Victoria CrossesThe Royal Engineers Museum, Library and Archive opened a NEW permanent display on the 12th November 2010. This exhbition is a modern redisplay of the 25 Victoria Crosses held by the Museum. The new display not only...Royal Engineers Museum, Library and Archive | Gillingham | 12 October 2010 — 12 October 2020


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The spy shooters at KGP look like they've caught a former secret agent man going topless in Sweden. That's right, it's the new Aston Martin DBS — but wait, what's this, since when has there been a convertible version — a Volante? Apparently the DBS thinks it's been retired as Bond's car, spending it's time getting a little bit of rest, relaxation and possibly some skiing in with a new drop-top model. Apparently someone hasn't been reading the press releases and doesn't know they've got to get back to the set soon. Or maybe it's because the new owners of the car company all about Bond girls need to get something new out while they try to figure out what they'll be doing about that whole not-having-a-new-platform issue they've got going on. Full spy report from KGP after the jump. UPDATE: KGP got us a new daylight shot so you can check out all of the drop-top hotness by dawn's early sunlight — the shot's in the gallery below.
It now appears that James Bond can now go topless in his DBS. We caught this lovely Aston Martin DBS convertible prototype chilling in the most inhospitable of top-down conditions—winter testing in the Arctic Circle. The DBS' aggressive body kit is in full effect, but its new soft-top roof line is unmistakable, even with a thin layer of snow accumulating on the canvas roof. The DBS convertible's new profile looks striking, as the more upright backlight emphasizes the flat rear deck gives the new drop-top some truly exotic panache. A DBS convertible makes perfect sense, but its appearance on the test circuit is one of those out-of-the-blue surprises that should warm an enthusiast's heart. We know it made the subzero night much more bearable for our shivering shooter.


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Athabasca Basin and beyond
Uranium news from Saskatchewan and elsewhere to February 13, 2015
by Greg Klein
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Fission Uranium expands main zone at PLS
With a 100% hit rate so far, the first 14 holes of Fission Uranium's (TSX:FCU) winter campaign extend the geography of Patterson Lake South's largest zone. Nine holes reported February 10 expand R780E at different points laterally 40 metres north, 30 metres eastward along strike and 50 metres vertically up dip—continuing a process begun with five step-outs released January 26. The R780E zone already holds about 96% of indicated and 90% of inferred categories from last month's estimate for Triple R, the Athabasca Basin's largest undeveloped uranium deposit. The resource "remains open in several directions, including strike, width and vertically," the company stated.
Scintillometer readings, which are no substitute for assays, showed strong mineralization for all holes. R780E now stretches about 900 metres in strike length. Beyond a 225-metre gap to the west, Triple R's R00E zone adds another 125 metres in strike. Overall, the 31,039-hectare property hosts four zones running east-west along 2.24 kilometres of potential strike.
This year's exploration budget comes to $15 million. Winter drilling gets a $10-million, four-rig, 20,230-metre program. Thirty-five holes will focus on the Triple R deposit as well as the R600W zone. Another 28 holes will test regional targets. Of special interest is the Forest Lake conductive corridor, which features "geophysics and radon signatures similar to the Patterson Lake conductive corridor" that hosts Triple R.
Read about the Patterson Lake South resource estimate.
See an historical timeline of the Patterson Lake South saga.
Fission Uranium buys into Fission 3.0
On February 11 Fission Uranium announced its intention to pay $3.08 million to get about 12% of its own spinout Fission 3.0 TSXV:FUU, a company not exactly known for monogamy.
Dev Randhawa, who leads both companies, resigned from the board of Azincourt Uranium TSXV:AAZ, according to a February 6 statement. Three days later came the announcement that he joined Aldrin Resource's (TSXV:ALN) board.
On February 5 Aldrin had announced a plan to acquire up to 50% of Fission 3.0's Key Lake properties, an 18,392-hectare package on the southeastern Basin. The deal would cost Aldrin $100,000 cash, 1.9 million shares and $6.9 million in expenditures up to May 2019. Fission 3.0 remains project operator.
Fission 3.0's already busy with winter campaigns on two PLS-vicinity projects. At the PLN project, a joint venture with Azincourt, a $1.45-million program of seven holes and geophysics has begun. The Clearwater project, a JV with Brades Resource TSXV:BRA, has 10 holes plus geophysics underway at an expected cost of $1.04 million.
In a mid-January announcement, Brades described three northeastern Basin acquisitions as part of an "objective to stake highly prospective areas near, and in the case of Perron Lake and Cree Bay, adjacent to, properties of Fission 3.0."
NexGen honoured for 2014 performance, reports 2015 progress
A Fission Uranium next-door neighbour, NexGen Energy TSXV:NXE made it into the TSX Venture 50, the company announced February 12. The TSXV compiles the list by ranking the top 10 companies in five sectors for market cap, share appreciation, volume and analyst coverage.
Last year's last batch of Rook 1 assays hit as high as 2.34% U3O8 over 26.5 metres, starting at 592.5 metres in downhole depth. Impressive as it was, the result fell short of earlier assays considered among the Basin's best.
A three-rig, 18,000-metre program began last month, focusing on the project's Arrow zone as well as "regional targets on the Rook 1 claim that covers all the major uranium-bearing conductor corridors in the southwestern region of the Athabasca Basin."
One target was noted in a January 20 announcement, a radon-in-lake-water anomaly 480 metres long by 20 to 150 metres wide that was found 400 metres northeast along strike from Arrow.
One week later the company reported scintillometer results for the first four holes from Arrow, all of them finding "substantial broad mineralization." Then, the following day, NexGen announced that VTEM, ground gravity and magnetic surveys identified six targets on the Fury area, about 13.5 kilometres southeast of Arrow. As a result, Fury's slated for about 4,500 metres of winter drilling.
Denison reports eU3O8 from Mann Lake and Wheeler River
Denison Mines TSX:DML released the year's first results on February 4 from Mann Lake and Wheeler River, two eastern Basin projects five kilometres apart and among the company's 14 drill campaigns scheduled for this year.
Measured with a downhole probe, the single Mann Lake hole showed 9.8% uranium oxide-equivalent (eU3O8) over 3.5 metres, starting at 671.7 metres in downhole depth. True thickness would come to at least 80%.
Denison holds a 30% stake in the JV, along with operator Cameco Corp TSX:CCO (52.5%) and AREVA Resources Canada (17.5%).
Three holes at Wheeler River's Gryphon zone showed:
- 0.3% eU3O8 over 2 metres, starting at 664.5 metres in downhole depth
- 2.9% over 2.4 metres, starting at 764.2 metres
- 2.8% over 2.4 metres, starting at 786.3 metres
- 9% over 4.6 metres, starting at 641.6 metres
True thickness is estimated at about 75%.
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Having already plugged their wares into all the right youth-cultural sockets with an appearance in a New York nightclub scene of C4's ubiquitous Skins and, more recently, an airing in a new series of Orange ads, Toronto upstarts Born Ruffians seem well-positioned in 2008 to tickle the middlebrow fancies of a blog-brained generation weaned on the able likes of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Vampire Weekend.
And they're likeable with it: damnably young and already having attained the kind of musical fluency that forever seems to evade their British counterparts, recent single 'Hummingbird' was as effective a showcase for the three-piece's talents as we could have hoped for; a sound that's equal parts zappy pop smarts and bracing complexity. In addition, the band roped in Animal Collective and Panda Bear producer Rusty Santos to give their debut LP a pleasing, echoey sheen - winner!
Boxes well and truly ticked, DiS hollers down the phone at frontman and guitarist Luke LaLonde while the band is en route to a Manchester show to get the long and short of it...
You've been touring with Caribou lately, how's that been going?
Yeah we're actually in the van with them now. We've toured with them before in the fall, they're super swell guys.
You're all high-school sweethearts, so to speak, as players in the band. Any embarrassing cul-de-sacs pursued on the way here?
Not really, it's been a pretty natural progression with us. We had a bit of luck along the way to get us to where we are.
Do you find that Toronto's music scene is unjustly neglected at the expense of Montreal's?
It's hard to say because I don't read a lot of the music press, especially outside of Canada... I mean the focus on the Canadian music scene came maybe like three or four years ago with the Arcade Fire's first album and then there was of Montreal, The Unicorns... I thought it was like a fad that kinda fizzled away, a trendy thing for a while... Toronto for me doesn't really have a sound. I don't even know if any city has a scene, it's more like an outsider's perspective, or at least I think you can only really say what a scene is maybe ten years down the line when you have more perspective on it.
Is Toronto a friendly kinda place?
It's not really a place you go to for its beauty, it's kind of a new and boring city. But y'know it's friendly and it feels like home... I actually like Montreal better if I'm being honest.
Now that the cat's out of the bag, how much of Red, Yellow And Blue's sound was down to Rusty Santos' influence? Parts of it do sound very akin to Animal Collective...
Well I mean they're a great band, one of the most important of the past ten years I think. Maybe I could hear their influence in the vocal melodies or something but I'm not really sure... I think sometimes you just come to the same conclusions as other bands accidentally, maybe you just share common influences and are drawing from similar pools. But Rusty has a very unique style of recording, like with Sung Tongs... I love the way that record sounds, and I think they lost the feeling of their records when they switched to Feels, you know...
Was it a similar sound you went after when deciding to work with Rusty or was it something else?
It was more that we wanted a distinct sound to our record, we didn't want one of those full volume studio records that has no feeling or tone to it, there needed to be some dynamics. We kind of just happened into working with Rusty in a way, we were going to work with another guy and it totally fell through last minute. We were coming up on a deadline and our manager had managed a tour with Animal Collective, she called Rusty up and set up a phone interview with us and it went from there.
Video: 'Hummingbird'
- - -
Are you ever surprised by the names that get dredged up in reference to your band's sound?
Yeah, most of the time I've never even heard of the band people are talking about. With our first EP we had a lot of comparisons to early Modest Mouse records; I'd heard a couple of their new albums which I liked alright but I was never a huge fan.
When you did eventually hear those records could you see where people were coming from?
No, I never did listen to them! I think I was afraid of hearing them to be honest. People bring up new bands every time, but everyone hears different things...
What names should be coming up that no-one thinks to mention then?
I dunno, maybe early Van Morrison or David Byrne vocals-wise, Violent Femmes, Can. It's hard to hear it the way other people hear it. My guitar is really influenced by Albert Hammond Jr from The Strokes - when I was 16 and first starting to write songs that had a big impact. We're into a lot of hip-hop as well...
The title of your album refers to the flag colours you'd choose in a country of your own making; however, with a spot of internet research I see that Andorra, Chad, Moldova and Romania have all chosen the same colours – does this annoy you greatly?
Well I was aware that a lot of countries had those colours, we had no intentions to draw comparisons to other countries.
You wouldn't like to maybe throw in a nice streak of magenta to make it more unique?
No I wanted the primary colours, they're like the building blocks that everything comes from... But it was just a song I wrote in my bedroom and obviously at the time I didn't realise I would have to answer all these questions...
...stupid questions?
No they're not stupid.
That one was.
They're just kinda hard to answer. Sometimes you don't really think about what you're writing and then you have to psychoanalyse yourself afterwards just to get at what you were really trying to say...
Do you think that's a healthy process?
Sometimes it's a little painful (laughs).
You appeared in Skins quite recently. Are you fans of the show or was it more a management thing to ensnare the youth vote?
Yeah that was funny, nobody knew the show at all and we went to New York for filming, our manager said "Yeah you gotta do this, it's a big deal", so yeah we did it for a bit of exposure in the UK. But the song was edited to shit, it was awful, they went into a totally different part of the song... It was kinda funny though. I still haven't seen an episode of the show.
Born Ruffians are currently engaged in a short-ish tour of the UK (dates below); you can mooch around their MySpace without fear of restraining order here.
23 Leeds Brudenell Social Club
24 Bristol Dot to Dot Festival
25 Nottingham Dot to Dot Festival
26 Kingston Banquet Records
27 London Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen (UK album release party)


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One fn to bind them
I had a chance to work on my parsec port a little this weekend. Say hello to one of the most important and ubiquitous parsers in the parsec arsenal,
The idea behind
parser-bind is that it should squish two parsers together. It represents parsing one thing after another. The only other parser we've built that squishes two parsers together is
parser-plus, which operates more like "or" in that if the first one fails, it tries the second. This parser will quit immediately whenever either fails. If this parser succeeds, it's because each matched successive input.
(defn parser-bind [m n]
(fn [state cok cerr eok eerr]
(letfn [(mcok [item state]
(n state cok cerr cok cerr)))
(meok [item state]
(n state cok cerr eok eerr)))]
(m state mcok cerr meok eerr))))
If the first parser, m, consumes ok, but the second one, n, does not consume, our combined parser will still call the
cok continuation. Conversely, if the first one is empty and ok, but the second one consumes, we will also escape via the
cok continuation.
parser-bind does not override any of the error handling continuations because if something goes wrong, we use them to exit immediately.
The useful part of
parser-bind isn't in the the above implementation. It isn't how parsec implements the idea. Parsec's implementation does take the first parser, m, but for it's second argument, it takes a function that, when executed, returns the second parser.
This is a neat idea because the unlike a parser that has to be fully specified at write-time, a function can bind intermediate, runtime results. Those intermediate results, once bound and named can be used to create further parsers. It allows us to write
let-like forms:
(p-let [c (one-of "abc")]
(char c))
Where each binding form in the parser let has to be a destructuring form and parser pair. The above is a parser that parses a character, and then looks for a duplicate of what it just parsed, similar to capture groups in regular expressions.
p-let uses parser-bind under the covers:
(defmacro p-let [[& bindings] & body]
(let [[bind-form p] (take 2 bindings)]
(if (= 2 (count bindings))
`(parser-bind ~p (fn [~bind-form] ~@body))
`(parser-bind ~p (fn [~bind-form] (p-let ~(drop 2 bindings) ~@body))))))
Given only a single binding pair, we make the parser in it the first argument to
parser-bind, and wrap a function with it's destructing form as args, returning the body. In longer binding forms, we produce a recursive structure that macroexpand will continue to expand one binding form at a time.


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Core Tragedy: As schools phase in Common Core, education industry stands to gain
As schools phase in Common Core, education industry stands to gain
In the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet, two servants boast about the many ways in which they're planning to knock the crap out of their enemies.
Like modern day gangbangers perched on the street corner, one of the men brags about how he's planning to torture the other gang's women by cutting their heads off. When the other servant suggests that his friend might be taking things a bit too far, the first servant corrects himself and says he'll instead cut off their "maidenheads."
Martye Einson loves how this exchange illustrates the Bard's "filthy" side. She's been teaching Shakespeare to teenagers for 20 years, most recently at Santa Fe High School. It can take a lot to grab the attention of high school students, let alone teach them to learn, but Einson says the sex and violence dripping through Shakespeare's work is sometimes good enough to get the job done.
The "maidenhead" exchange, for example, is a reference to taking a woman's virginity. Einson's textbook fails to grasp this.
She's encouraged by the Santa Fe school district to teach from the textbook, a 1,400-page tome written and published by the for-profit education mega-corporation Pearson. The book is aligned with the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of national education guidelines to which most public school teachers in the country must now aspire.
Einson hates the textbook because she says it strips all the authenticity out of the literature she teaches. Most of the time, she keeps the book out of her lesson plans.
"I use it for punishment," she says, wearing thick-rimmed glasses that match her solid black blouse. Shocks of gray flow down her long, curly dark hair. "I say, 'OK, everybody get the orange book,' and then they wonder who did something wrong."
Her dilemma illustrates the often regimented experience of teaching in the modern era of school reform. Common Core, adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia, is its newest face.
The national standards are supposed to make their way to teachers' lesson plans in the classroom. They're designed with the same promise of the many reforms of years past: making every student college-bound and prepared to thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy.
But a growing number of teachers like Einson are experiencing a loss in translation when it comes to actually employing the standards at school. To appease her higher-ups that she's using Common Core, Einson displays the standards in her classroom and writes them into her daily lesson plans. She calls it needless busywork.
"The Common Core standards themselves as they are written are fine," Einson says. "It is all the garbage that goes with them that makes the whole thing impossible."
That "garbage" is being marshaled in by a growing web of players who extend from the White House to Santa Fe's BF Young Building, where school district employees work on imposing the new curriculum across the city's 31 public schools. But the top local player is New Mexico Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera, who has what many characterize as too cozy of a relationship with several of the education industry's biggest financial backers.
Extraordinary in its scope, Common Core was conceived in 2009 by just two dozen people largely from the education nonprofit and standardized-testing world. The National Governors Association appointed the group to write new, sweeping standards with the stated purpose of making public education more relevant to the real world.
What they came up with focuses on two learning disciplines: English and mathematics. For English, Common Core emphasizes textual evidence. For example, students will read a classic text like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and then write essays that pull sentences and phrases directly from that text to make their arguments.
"It's not OK to just summarize the book," says Santa Fe Public Schools Chief Academic Officer Almi Abeyta. "What we're trying to do is shift students' thinking, so they're not just writing opinions. We tell them to back it up with evidence used in the text."
Because so many earlier education reform attempts on the national level were challenged as unconstitutional federal overreaching, states aren't required to adopt Common Core. But states that did so by the summer of 2010 were eligible for lucrative federal grants. Each school district is supposed to have autonomy in how it accomplishes the task.
In Santa Fe, Abeyta is in charge of phasing in the new standards.
For math, she says Common Core requires teachers to go "deeper than wide" and emphasize longer, in-depth lesson plans rather than a more traditional practice of bouncing from one discipline to the next. "Sometimes we're teaching so much content, but the kids are not getting the gist of the subject," she says.
To the more cynical-minded, it's all about the money.
Common Core got its biggest boost when Bill Gates jumped on the bandwagon and directed more than $200 million of his personal wealth to get school districts, education nonprofits and teachers unions all on board.
President Obama also stepped into the game. During the worst moments of the recession, his Department of Education gave federal Race to the Top grants to the states that effectively adopted Common Core the fastest.
Within a matter of months, states began signing on at a rapid pace. The Washington Post later called it "one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in US history."
New Mexico was no outlier. The state adopted the standards in October 2010, just months before the end of Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson's term. Susana Martinez' Republican administration latched onto them wholeheartedly when she replaced Richardson the following year.
Last May, the state found itself embroiled in a Common Core controversy. Through its Public Education Department, New Mexico joined 13 other states to give Pearson—the same corporation that writes Einson's textbook—a large contract to write and administer a Common Core-related standardized test that could reach up to 10 million students.
Like the spread of Common Core itself, Pearson's contract to control the standardized test is sweeping in its size and could earn the company more than $1 billion over eight years. It's enough to make a Mississippi Department of Education official who helped negotiate the deal pronounce its scale as "unprecedented."
One of Pearson's competitors uses another word: illegal.
To critics, Pearson is the epitome of the dark side of the education reform—a company profiting from an increasing corporatization of the public school system that's pushing out well-paid teachers in lieu of cheap labor and outsourced work.
Pearson is indeed a moneymaker. The London-based publishing house, which also has major stakes in Penguin Random House and owns the Financial Times newspaper, reported more than $8.8 billion in revenue last year.
Lots of this money comes from the US public education system. In neighboring Texas alone, Pearson is in the thick of a five-year, $500 million contract to write and grade several standardized tests.
But Pearson's new Common Core contract takes lucrative to the next level. It comes through the Partnership For Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC), a federally funded consortium of 14 states that banded together to create a new standardized test aligned with the Common Core standards.
Each member state's education chief makes up PARCC's governing board, which meets quarterly. For New Mexico, that's Skandera, who enrolled the state in the consortium in August 2011.
To create the new standardized test, PARCC needed to find a company willing to take on the grunt work. The consortium also needed one of its member states to volunteer as a fiscal agent in charge of issuing the contract to create the test. New Mexico, a state that often finds its government involved in questionable dealmaking, was more than willing to step up to the plate.
What followed is a Land of Enchantment cliché.
Accusations that state officials rigged the bid to favor Pearson flew even before New Mexico officially awarded the contract to the company. In December, just weeks after the state issued the request for proposal for the contract, the Washington DC-based American Institutes for Research filed a protest against the bid.
Chief among the nonprofit's concerns in its reading of the proposal was how the bid required the winner of the contract—whether it was Pearson or a different company—to use Pearson's online testing system for the first year of testing. After that first year, the contract requires PARCC to switch from that online-testing system to a yet-to-be determined open source system for the remaining seven years.
To the institute's Executive Vice President Jon Cohen, the setup seemed sketchy.
"No one but Pearson could have won that first year," Cohen says. "They wanted to carry that advantage to all the other years."
Given the institute's own interest in the PARCC contract, its arguments should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, one thing's for certain: The circumstances that led to the Pearson contract contradict the competitive business environment that Common Core promised to create. Earlier this year, Bill Gates characterized the breadth of Common Core as akin to a universal "electrical plug" that will lead to more opportunities for more businesses to get involved in the mix.
"Scale is good for free-market competition," Gates said at a Washington DC panel sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute think tank. "You'd think that sort of pro-capitalistic market-driven people would be in favor of it."
But for those who follow the education industry, Pearson's awarding of the PARCC contract was as predictable as ever. Last year, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing warned that Common Core-aligned exams will still be written by "the same, incompetent, profit-driven companies" that have dominated the standardized testing market for years. Pearson was the only company to even bid on the PARCC contract.
Pearson's troubles with administering tests have cost nearly $40 million in court settlements and fines resulting from its wrong scoring of tens of thousands of tests across the country over the last 15 years. Yet, critics say the company's lavish donations to education nonprofits and influential relationships with public officials help it overcome these slip-ups.
"I smell a rat in this whole thing," says Kathy Korte, an Albuquerque school board member who in the last year has become one of the most vocal critics of the state's education reform policies. "There's something weird and wrong going on here when you think [about how] this testing stuff is going for all the PARCC states, and only one company benefits."
Korte is especially critical of Skandera's relationships with the many organizations that financially back Common Core.
"How would you like a 7-year-old to be grading your job?"
Between the summer of 2011 and the fall of 2013, for example, PARCC paid at least $13,000 in airfare and lodging for Skandera to attend nine out-of-state conferences. Pearson frequently donates to the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an education-reform advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The foundation paid another $9,000 worth of Skandera's airfare and lodging during the same period. Skandera, meanwhile, serves in Chiefs for Change, a reform-advocacy network of current and former state education chiefs also run by Bush's foundation. (Before arriving in New Mexico, she worked as a deputy commissioner in Florida's Department of Education when Bush was governor.)
Skandera's dalliance with outside education groups has led to a complaint by an advocacy group to the Internal Revenue Service. Last fall, ProgressNow New Mexico accused Bush's group of breaking federal laws that prevent nonprofits from paying for gifts and services to public officials. The complaint is pending.
A public records request by SFR found that Skandera still billed regular salary hours from her department during many of these out-of-state trips. She has argued that the substance of these trips, such as testifying about New Mexico's reform efforts in front of Congress, were in the state's best interest.
State education department spokeswoman Aimee Barabe says Skandera's partnerships have resulted in bringing more money to the state to pay for public education, including a $150,000 Common Core-aligned grant from General Electric. She adds that taxpayers win because they don't have to pay for Skandera's trips.
But former state Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil says public officials must be careful even on trips that can easily be considered public business. Vigil, who served as a cabinet secretary from 2007 to 2010, cautions that taking money from outside groups is "generally a bad idea."
"It always raises the question of conflicts of interest," he says. "My rule of thumb was if the thought would cross my mind that it would in any shape or form look like a conflict, I wouldn't do it."
Pearson is the easy target, but the American Institutes for Research is possibly just as guilty in its quest for a piece of the education industry pie.
Pearson accuses the institute of desiring to break up the PARCC contract in a way that would force New Mexico to issue bids for smaller jobs. In this scenario, the institute would reap the benefits and taxpayers would pay more for the same services, Pearson argues.
The institute is no stranger to outsourced public education contracts, even here in New Mexico. Recently, the company has contracted with the state to design and administer standardized tests for students with disabilities.
Cohen maintains that unlike Pearson, the institute's nonprofit status means his company's first priority isn't to line shareholders' pockets and that it can't advocate for political causes.
"Our mission is to conduct and apply the best social science to make people's lives better," he says.
But in many ways, the institute's business model relies on the very same education-reform agendas that for-profit companies like Pearson back. Cohen's company has already proven it can win when states make unexpected U-turns in their education policies.
Last fall, Florida shocked the education community when it left the PARCC consortium over mounting concerns about costs and federal overreach. By the spring, the state granted the institute a six-year, $220 million contract to create and administer Florida's new flagship standardized test. Like the PARCC test, Florida's new standardized test will be based on Common Core standards.
Indeed, one of the New Mexico education department's biggest criticisms of the institute is that it holds contracts in Florida and Ohio that bundle the tasks of writing and administering tests in the same manner as the PARCC contract they're disputing.
"Apparently, what is anticompetitive in New Mexico is perfectly competitive in Florida and Ohio," reads the state education department's filed response to AIR's protest.
Kris Nielsen, a Las Cruces public school teacher and author of the anti-Common Core book Children of the Core, criticizes AIR for "just trying to get in on the action" in the public education outsourcing sweepstakes.
"The good news is that it [could] break up the Pearson monopoly," Nielsen says. "The bad news is that it's just more of the same."
Korte goes a step further by equating the scramble over the PARCC contract to "using our kids as guinea pigs and moneymaking objects."
For now, the institute's arguments against Pearson aren't meeting much success in New Mexico. Last week, State Purchasing Agent Larry Maxwell rejected the company's protest against the PARCC contract, stating that the bid's crafting "was a careful and thoughtful decision and approach made for the benefit of the public."
As of press time, the institute was weighing whether to challenge Maxwell's decision in a way that wouldn't delay the PARCC test from happening this year. Cohen says the legal team met after the ruling and feels positive about the institute prevailing in an appeal in Santa Fe's District Court.
In the classroom, Martye Einson is gearing up to teach the new PARCC test, which this year replaces the state's Standards Based Assessments.
Einson's test prep will begin the first day of school with vocabulary exercises. Soon, she'll have to sign a confidentiality agreement that will bar her from looking at the test questions and student answers. The PARCC "security agreement" warns that teachers caught peeking at tests could be investigated and lose their teaching licenses and jobs as a punishment.
Parents also don't get to see the tests. This is one of many reasons why Santa Fe parent Jennifer Gilmore says she opted her first-grade daughter out of standardized testing last year.
"You can't see the test," Gilmore says. "You can't look and tell what your child did wrong."
Cynthia Allen, another Santa Fe parent, opted her son out of standardized testing as well. She particularly disagrees with how students' standardized test results now factor in to the state's teacher evaluation system.
"My 7-year-old son is basically grading his teacher," Allen says. "How would you like a 7-year-old to be grading your job?"
States are also starting to opt out of the new standardized test plan. Ten states have dropped out of PARCC since 2010. Last month, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal made an announcement that his state would decline to participate in both PARCC and Common Core. His state education board is expected to sue him over the matter, leaving Louisiana's future with PARCC up in the air.
Indiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma have completely dropped Common Core.
New Mexico won't likely be joining these states anytime soon. Instead, schools here will spend the next year adjusting to the more time-consuming test. This year, state public schools will block out eight weeks to issue the test, according to a PED document obtained by SFR. That's more than twice as long as the period the school district used to set aside for the previous testing scheme.
While kids won't be slaving away at the test the whole time—their exams take roughly 10 hours to complete over periods while the schools spend the remaining time on regular lessons and makeup exams from absent students—the test will still dominate much of the agenda.
"I can't imagine that extending the window is going to create less problems," argues Grace Mayer, a De Vargas Middle School art teacher who's also president of the National Education Association Santa Fe. "The primary focus of school [will be] to make sure that the primary population is going to get through the test."
Compounding the situation is the fact that Santa Fe isn't completely ready for the new test, at least not to the standards of PARCC's vision.
That's because students are supposed to take the test completely on computers. Mandates like this have raised hackles about the cash that tech companies stand to gain as schools are forced to update their computer equipment to provide for the test.
In February, the Santa Fe school board approved a property tax increase for a $55 million tech bond to inundate the district with computers and tablets over the next few years. The school district maintains that the new technology will be used primarily for its own five-year Digital Learning Plan and not just tests.
Even with the new coming money, Santa Fe schools are still not in a position to issue PARCC completely digitally this year. While the schools have the option of a full paper test, SFPS Chief Accountability and Strategy Officer Richard Bowman says the district is working to find a middle ground between paper and digital testing.
At 61, Einson's education career may come to an end before SFPS can fully adopt to a digital exam. Until then, she'll continue to juggle her literature lessons with teaching to the test.
She laments about recently seeing another Common Core-related assignment for Romeo and Juliet. The assignment instructs students to write an essay as Friar Laurence, the character who marries the couple in an attempt to resolve the violence between the lovers' warring families. As the friar, students must write a letter apologizing for Romeo and Juliet's suicides to their parents.
For Einson, the assignment is yet another lazy interpretation of the tragedy.
"It's assuming that Friar Laurence is somehow responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, and he's not," she explains. "He's done everything that a good pastor can do for his community."
She ends with a thought that could also easily explain her views on Common Core: "The whole thing just kind of pissed me off."
– See more at: http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-8891-core-tragedy.html#sthash.iBfs2by2.V1jQEVHH.dpuf
via Core Tragedy: As schools phase in Common Core, education industry stands to gain.


text:
DailyDirt: Making Sweet Music
from the urls-we-dig-up deptPlenty of people complain about how pop music sounds formulaic and that several boy bands seem to be manufactured with minimal variations between them. Someday soon, though, computer algorithms might create more pop music than humans can even attempt to compose. Here are just a few steps towards a world filled with machine-made music.
- Researchers have developed a piano tuning algorithm that can perform the task almost as well as a trained human ear. Yet another job that robots are going to take away from humans.... [url]
- Genetic algorithms are often taught in machine learning classes, and these algorithms have been applied to all sorts of fields -- including music. Computer-generated fugues might not sound too pleasant, but neither does trance music... [url]
- Using a 'Hit Potential Equation', computers can analyze pop singles and predict future hit tracks. The researchers behind this project admit, "musical tastes evolve, which means our 'hit potential equation' needs to evolve as well." [url]
- To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
Filed Under: algorithm, machine learning, music, pop, robot, trance


text:
Sugar Shout Out For Sept. 17, 2012
Sugar Shout Out: What Glee Should Do With the New Characters
- What Glee should do with their new characters this season
- Six recipes to ensure a festive guacamole day
- Angelina Jolie advocates for Syrian refugees in Iraq
- Easy ways to fill in sparse brows
- There were plenty of hot men at NYFW, too
- Which celebrity babies were the biggest NYFW fans?
- The best street style from London Fashion Week
- Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick get in the real estate flipping business
- Video: Our predictions on who will take home the drama Emmys
- Make time to voting despite your 9-to-5 schedule
- Football basics for the casual fan
- Get to know the 2012 National Dressage champions
- CelebStyle: Diane Kruger's introductory lesson on crop-top wearing
- Do you plan to preorder the iPhone 5?
- Get ready to wear wedge sneakers this Fall


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28th-annual Steamboat Marathon as popular as ever
If you go
What: 28th annual Steamboat Marathon
When: Sunday, starting at 7:30 a.m.
Where: The day will include a 26.2-mile marathon, which starts near Steamboat Lake; a 13.1-mile half-marathon, which starts on Routt County Road 129; and a 10-kilometer race in Steamboat Springs. All the races will finish on Lincoln Avenue in front of the courthouse in downtown Steamboat.
Road closures
- The westbound lane of Lincoln Avenue will be closed from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday between Fifth and 11th streets, with each of those streets closed between Lincoln Avenue and Oak Street.
- On Routt County Road 129 from Cullens Corner to the start of the half marathon, there will be one-way traffic controlled by a pilot car leading traffic on the southbound side of the road.
- Northbound traffic on C.R. 129 will be diverted to the left lane just past the entrance to Elk River Estates and proceed north to Cullens Corner, where traffic controllers will be in place.
- Southbound traffic on C.R. 129 will be diverted at Cullens Corner onto C.R. 44 then back onto C.R. 129 just north of the airport.
Packet pickup
Registration packets can be picked up at Olympian Hall at Howelsen Hill from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.
Steamboat Springs — Andy Picking didn't hesitate much.
"My best memory running the Steamboat Marathon," he started, before pausing. "My best memory was the first year we had my new daughter. She was waiting for me at the finish line. That was pretty special."
That, he said, topped his second-place finish in 2006. It topped his first 26.2-mile trek from Hahn's Peak to Steamboat Springs in 2001, and it topped his eighth-consecutive running of the signature Steamboat race last year.
With his daughter, Sophie, now 3, and 2-year-old twins Izzy and Drew waiting at the finish line, he said this year's race will be pretty sweet, as well.
"When you have kids, it puts everything in perspective," Picking said.
Picking will join nearly 1,700 runners Sunday as they stream down Routt County Road 129 into Steamboat Springs, a massive herd heading for friends and family waiting behind the ropes of the finish line.
The 28th-annual Steamboat Marathon returns to the Yampa Valley on Sunday. All the races start at 7:30 a.m. The full marathon starts near Hahn's Peak. The 13.1-mile half-marathon kicks off from Moon Hill along C.R. 129, and the 10-kilometer race starts at the courthouse on Lincoln Avenue in downtown Steamboat and winds around town.
All the races and all the nearly 2,000 expected competitors will finish on Lincoln Avenue in front of the courthouse.
"I'm getting excited," race director Paul Sachs said. "Everything's going great. So far, so good."
Sachs said this year's registration numbers have proven almost a mirror image of 2008's. The marathon again isn't likely to reach its 500-runner capacity, topping out at a little more than 400. The half-marathon, meanwhile, remains extremely popular. It filled its 1,300 available slots several months ago. The 10K's participation is more difficult to predict. It's typically filled with runners making last-second decisions, and Sachs said Sunday's weather forecast could make as big of a difference as anything else.
"It's been very similar this year to the last couple of the years," Sachs said. "It's encouraging that even in this economy, things haven't changed. It's a great time to come up to Steamboat, and people that do stay here in town at least one night, and most stay two."
The number of competitors will be the same. The courses will be the same. And the smart money says the marathon winner will be the same, as well.
Eight-time Steamboat Marathon champ Jason Saitta, of Parker, will return. Saitta has captured the top spot eight times in the past decade. He won last year's event in 2 hours, 36 minutes and 2 seconds. He'll try to win the title for the fifth consecutive time this year.
Saitta may be the favorite, but Picking said he'll finish near the top, as well. He wouldn't say what time or place he was aiming for, only that after eight successful trips, he couldn't be more excited to go for a ninth.
"I've done it so many times, now I wouldn't know what else to do with myself," Picking said. "Having run the Boston Marathon and some of the other world-class marathons out there, I have to say the Steamboat Marathon is great. It has a hometown marathon feel with world-class organization."
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I have been an active professional software developer (mostly utilizing .NET) for the past five years and, without being too full of myself, I would say I'm a very competent developer. I stay intimately up to date with the latest tools, the industry, and modern standards/practices. I work for a fairly high-level IT company and I swing just fine with the rest of them. I am even up to date on the latest team dynamic methodologies and feel like I have good leadership/management/people skills.
However, I never got my degree. I learned and am learning everything I know on my own from hundreds of books and experiences. I ran my own software company for a while until it took a big hit from the economy a year or so ago. It took a LONG time and A LOT of applications, but I finally found the job I have now.
Like an idiot I dropped out of college to forgo paying more tuition and I started my company and as life goes, I now wish I had stayed and got the degree. I have student loans that are in default and I'm working my hind end off to pay off those debts now that I am making a fair amount of money again.
I have hit too many ceilings without this degree. For one, I will never make as much as someone with the same level of knowledge and experience, but also has a degree. Also, the amount of effort it took to get a job in the industry without a degree was exhausting and depressing.
Now I am wondering what the best way for me to go about getting my degree is?
- Are there online schools that would offer this degree?
- Would an online school even be a good choice?
- Would my knowledge and experience in the industry help me finish schooling faster/cheaper?
- Have any of you ever found yourself in a similar position? If so, how did you overcome all the barriers put in front of you?
- Have any of you ever had student loans in default and tried to go back to school later? How did you deal with that and how did it affect you?


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10:00 am - 4:00 pm
On the 15th of every month (or the Friday before the 15th), the Country Cupboard Food Bank opens to clients until the end of the month. PHA clients are able to come to RHAC and get groceries once during each Country Cupboard period. For more information on Country Cupboard, contact Rob Newman.


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This individual Formula Flowcode Kit includes a built and tested controller board, and a plastic chassis with gearbox. It also includes a special, reduced-functionality version of the Flowcode programming software and tutorial.
1. The brain of Formula Flowcode - a PIC18F4455 chip 2. USB socket 3. Master reset switch 4. Programming LED 5. External 5V supply input 6. Power switch 7. Plastic chassis with battery compartment, motors with gearboxes, and 2 wheels. 8. Motor driver chip - a L293D 9. Microphone with sound level amplifier circuit 10. User-definable press switches 11. Distance sensor - right 12. Distance sensor - center 13. Distance sensor - left 14. Light sensor 15. Line following circuit board 16. 8 user-definable LEDs 17. Loudspeaker volume control 18. Loudspeaker 19. E-blocks expansion socket
The Formula Flowcode robot works with the downloadable reduced-functionality Flowcode free version. Flowcode is one of the world's most advanced graphical programming languages for microcontrollers. The great advantage of Flowcode is that it allows those with little experience to create complex electronic systems in minutes.
Flowcode achieves this in two steps:
1. Users drag and drop flowchart symbols onto the screen, and fill in the dialog boxes when prompted. 2. Flowcode compiles the flow chart into code that is downloaded to a PICmicro microcontroller which executes the program.
The version of Flowcode shipped with the Formula Flowcode robot is fully functional with the limitations that it can only compile code for the Formula Flowcode robot, it has a maximum code size of 2K, and on-screen components are limited to switches, LEDs and ADCs.
You can purchase the Flowcode Professional for more functionality that includes unlimited code size and use of all on-screen components, as well as being able to produce hex code for a wide range of PIC microcontroller devices.
As background learning material, the CD-ROM An Introduction to Microcontroller Programming is available. This CD-ROM includes a wealth of material on PICmicro microcontrollers, their operation, circuitry and project work. It also includes a large section on developing programs using Flowcode which covers inputs, outputs, loops, decisions, macros, memory, string handling and much more. This CD-ROM is included only with the class bundle packages mentioned below.
User support for Formula Flowcode is available on the Matrix web site forum where users can ask each other questions and swap programs.
A 28-page user guide is shipped with Formula Flowcode which includes assembly instructions, installation instructions, the circuit diagram and operation.
Formula Flowcode is named after the Formula Ford racing competition where the cars are all identical and winning only comes down to the driver's skills. In this case, winning comes down to the programming skills of the user. Several challenges/exercises are included. For details, see the Formula Flowcode brochure. Some challenges require the full version of Flowcode Professional.


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Hey guys,
So I'm making a UNIX minishell, and am trying to add pipelines, so I can do things like this:
However I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the piping part. I replace all the "|" characters with 0, and then run each line as a normal line. However, I am trying to divert the output and input. The input of a command needs to be the output of the previous command, and the output of a command needs to be the input of the next command.Code:ps aux | grep dh | grep -v grep | cut -c1-5
I'm doing this using pipes, however I can't figure out where to call pipe() and where to close them. From the main processing function, processline(), I have this code:
So, I'm recursively(the code above is in processline) sending the commands in between the "|" to be processed by processline.Code:if((pix = findUnquotChar(line_itr, '|'))) { line_itr[pix++] = 0; if(pipe (fd_a) < 0) perror("pipe"); processline(line_itr, inFD, fd_a[1], pl_flags); line_itr = &(line_itr[pix]); while((pix = findUnquotChar(line_itr, '|')) && pix < line_len) { close(fd_a[1]); line_itr[pix++] = 0; if(pipe (fd_b) < 0) perror("pipe"); processline(line_itr, fd_a[0], fd_b[1] pl_flags); close(fd_a[0]); close(fd_b[1]); line_itr = &(line_itr[pix]); } return; }
The 2nd and 3rd parameter of processline are the inputFD and outputFD respectively, so I need to process a command, write the output to a pipe, and then call processline again on the next command, however this time the output of the previous command is the input.
This just doesn't seem like it can work though with one pipe, so in the above example I'm trying to make it work with two, by possibly flip flopping back and forth between using fd_a[0] as input for commands that occur during an odd iteration in the while loop, and use fd_b[0] for input on commands that occur during an even iteration.
I'm just having trouble seeing how this is possible with a single pipe, if you guys need any additional info just ask. Here's the entire processline function in case you want to take a look:
[C] processline - Pastebin.com


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Last night, after a little issue with Viddler, we aired the premiere episode of Retro Game Master.
It was the first time I've seen an entire episode, and I loved it. What did you think? If you haven't seen it yet make sure to go watch The Katcho take on the NES' insanely difficult Ninja Gaiden.
Retro Game Master airs weekly on Kotaku at 8 p.m. eastern on Thursdays. The show and Kotaku reruns will remain on the site for viewing at your leisure throughout the season. Licensing prevents the show from being seen outside of North America.


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Compare Products: Check up to four products with to see a side-by-side comparison
All of our electrical terminal blocks are available at rock bottom prices, making it easy to stock up on all of the parts you need. We offer these products in a variety of pole amounts, amps, and voltages, ensuring you'll have no trouble finding parts for all of your existing electrical systems. No matter what kind of business you own, terminal blocks are a must-have addition to your inventory of replacement electrical supplies. For related products, check out our rectangular signal lights, round signal lights, and rotary switches. If you're wondering where to buy alto-shaam terminal blocks, we have a large selection of alto-shaam terminal blocks for sale at the lowest prices.


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We have addiction treatment specialists available 24/7, ready to help you find the right treatment choice that meets your financial ability.addictionca.com


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Property Transfers
Christopher D. and Laura D. Cook to Ivan N. Ratestic, 118 Westwood Circle, $180,900.
Beverly C. Bishop to Patricia Joan Weis, 120 Waterbury Court, $133,000.
Peter L. Gibbes, Trustee, to Bruce C. and Joan Binney, 1622 Rose Hill Drive, $209,000.
Peggy Ann and Richard Lee Rose to Alexandra L. Bredenko, 1304 King Street, $144,000.
Lorna L. Walker to Thomas H. and Judith J. Campbell, unit in Lewis & Clark Square, 250 West Main Street, $280,000.
Jeffrey D. and Jill A. Tatum to Franz R. Richey, 2218 Banbury Street, Greenbrier, $170,000.
Kathryn H. Scribner to Eric J. and Souzanne A. Wright, 1505 Westwood Road, $196,000.
Gresham M. and Carla A. Sykes to Siva Thiagarajah, unit in McGuffey Hill condominiums, $380,000.
Richard H. and William J. deButts Jr. and Mary D. Strother to 1817 House LLC, 1211 and 1213 West Main Street, $800,000.
Eric T. and Francine B. Jensen to Karen Asaro and Kendra Robins, 2749 McElroy Drive, $196,000.
John P. and Sophia S. Farmer to C. W. James VanMilder, 1613 Greenleaf Lane, $262,500.
Virginia D. Yarboro to Katherine Gale Chapman, 317 Fairway Avenue, $115,000.
Michael B. and Dawn Dorsey to Steve P. Rutherford, 103 Waterbury Court, $127,500.
Mesa Associates to Sander and Amy S. Mayer and Jeffrey J. Cohen, 2014 Lewis Mountain Road, $310,000.
Wendell W. Gibson to Brendan R. Matthews and Margaret M. Keller, 809 Moore Avenue, $225,000.
Dunham Center Ltd. and Douglas S. Allen, et al., to VanDerLinde Housing Inc., two lots in Meadows subdivision, 2114 Angus Road, $2,550,000.
Timothy and Beverly L. Supler to Robert C. and Joyce R. Harllee, 105 Locust Lane Court, $225,000.
Thomas W. and Elizabeth C. Leidner to William G. and Shannon Worrell Chapman, 132 Cameron Lane, $640,000.
Scott C. and Susan E. Burke to Martin Yates, unit in the Corner Village, Wertland Street, $82,500.
Glenn E. and Victoria C. Branham to Benjamin Johnston, 1304 Midland Street, $130,500.
Judy L. Savage to Elizabeth L. Carter, 912 Locust Lane, $179,900.
Mary Elizabeth Driskill to Carl E. Owens III, 850 West Street, $142,500.
Jonathan and Megan Kauffmann to Mary John Smith, Trustee, 810 Rockland Avenue, $152,000.
James M. Chatlani to Wesley A. Frye, 324 Riverside Avenue, $118,700.
Lonnie and Bertha M. Vest Jr. to Michael P. McMahon, 301 Fifth Street SW, $135,000.
James R. Cook Jr. to Mark A. and Laura T. Humbertson, 812 Valley View Circle, $212,500.
Alissa O. Carter to Roger Wood, 508 Rockland Avenue, $76,500.
Dorothy L. Kuss, Judith M. Sweet, and W. Ivar Mawyer to Douglas D. and Sterling M. Hudson, 1449 Rugby Avenue, $189,500.
Elizabeth Sue Anne Mawyer to Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 430 Monroe Lane, no price given.
Charles A. and Patricia D. Frye to Wesley A. Frye, 718 Orangedale Avenue, gift.
Wesley A. Frye to Angela M. Garland, 718 Orangedale Avenue, $70,000.
Kara Gloeckner to Jackson Landers and Patricia Smith, 613 Shamrock Road, $162,000.
Adam Wolpa to James A. and Marie D. Ryan, 134 Stribling Avenue, $181,500.
Allan H. Cadgene and Gabriel Silverman, Trustees, to Joseph F. Mallory, 402 Dice Street, $125,000.
Edward P. Smith and Tracy Landon to Andrew W. and Allison Snowhite, 1013 St. Clair Avenue, $249,700.
David A. and Patricia L. Hall to Wesley G. and Danielle W. Steiner, 1220 Agnese Street, $216,000.
Mei James Ho and Maria J. Ho to Kevin J. Grimm, unit in Brandon Avenue condominiums, $96,000.
Donna Lorraine Bartlett to Karen L. Vandecar and Lisa D. Green, 216 Chestnut Street, $162,500.
Ashok D., Gita R., and Anand A. Ajgaonkar to Elizabeth Sue Ann Mawyer, two lots on Mulberry Avenue, $165,500.
Kellytown LLC to Rae Development Corp., two lots in Madison Place PUD, $160,000.
Truman W. Armstrong Jr. to Jonathan T. H. Armstrong, 606 Druid Avenue, $146,000.
Sheila Lynn Flectcher and Daniel W. and H. Jerry Fielding to Wendell W. Gibson and Rebecca I. Crowe, 123 Summit Street, $160,000.
Diversified Property Investing LLC to Johne F. Girdley and Ida Simmons, lot in Idlewood subdivision, gift.
Joseph F. and Dorie A. Mallory to Ruben J. and Brenda E. Castaneda, 305 Seventh Street NW, $155,000.
Berhane Melles and Assegedgch Begaga to Stephen P. and Patricia P. Harder, 603 Hinton Avenue, $132,000.
Madison's II LLC to Stephanie VanHover, Trustee, 105 Tripper Court, $319,000.
Donna M. Powell to Gail J. Mankie, 517 Rougemont Avenue, $80,000.
Junior League of Charlottesville to XQZ Real Estate LLC, 317 East Main Street, $435,000.
Lane E. Bonner III to Sena A. Floyd, 710 Anderson Street, $100,425.
Claude L. Kennedy to Debbie E. and Roger L. Henry Sr., 108 Shale Place, Willoughby, $168,000.
Susan and Henry S. Creasy IV to John T. and Loretta L. Delehanty, 645 Evergreen Avenue, $399,900.
FNRI LLC to Fifth Street Development LLC, 206 Fifth Street SW, $202,500.
Shirley V. Smith to Jeffrey D. and Susan m. Lanterman, 712 Nalle Street, $81,000.
Margaret L. Johnson to Thomas H. Wyllie Jr., 1916 Thomson Road, $187,500.
Glenn E. and Victoria C. Branham to Michael D., Janice C., and Kera M. Lugar, 906 Rockland Avenue, $95,000.
Alexis Ann Halley and Bayard Lacey Catron III to Roberto A. and Cheryl Lynn Gomez, unit in McGuffey Hill Condominiums, 305 Second Street NW, $228,000.
Eric R. Baer to Walter T. Slawski and Ashleigh E. Owens, 2306 Highland Avenue, $298,000.
Edward L. and Emily E. Drake to Carrboro Limited Partnership LLP, 926 King Street, $116,000.
Edward L. and Emily E. Drake to Carrboro Limited Partnership LLP, 922 King Street, $105,000.
Springwater LLC to Adam L. Frazier, 707 Graves Street, $173,500.
[At the request of a party to this transaction, alleging harassment from a third party, this transaction has been stricken from the web archive.]
Junior League of Charlottesville to XQZ Real Estate LLC, 317 East Main Street, $435,000.


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Where is the International Space Station now?
This image shows the position of the ISS at the time this web page was accessed - click on the browser 'refresh' or 'reload' button to update the image.
The image below shows the ground track of the Space Station as it continues to orbit the Earth.
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Credits: C. Sufitchi http://www.n2yo.com


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Bacterin International Holdings, Inc. (BONE) - Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare - Deals and Alliances Profile
Bone Metabolism Therapeutics Market
Bacterin International Holdings, Inc. (Bacterin) is a medical device company and accredited tissue bank that designs, processes, manufactures, and markets advanced medical products. The company operates in two divisions, namely, Biologics Division and Coatings Division. Biologics Division offers OsteoSponge product line and an allograft portfolio designed specifically to meet the needs of the Spine, Cranio-maxillofacial, reconstructive, and trauma markets. The company's product portfolio include OsteoSponge, OsteoWrap, OsteoSelect, OsteoLock, BacFast, Sports Medicine, Traditional allografts and Coated Devices (Antimicrobial-Coated Wound Drains).The company's Coatings Division develops medical devices intended for use in several diverse clinical areas including orthopedic, plastic, and cardiovascular surgery. The company has an FDA and ISO 13485:2003 registered facility in Belgrade. The company's Biologics Division operates out of a 16,000 square foot facility with a processing laboratory that consists of five Class 100 clean rooms. The Biologics Division follows Good Tissue Practice (cGTP) and Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP). Bacterin is headquartered in Belgrade, Montana, The US.
Bacterin International Holdings, Inc. (BONE) - Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare - Deals and Alliances Profile provides you comprehensive data and trend analysis of the company's Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As), partnerships and financings. The report provides detailed information on Mergers and Acquisitions, Equity/Debt Offerings, Private Equity, Venture Financing and Partnership transactions recorded by the company over a five year period. The report offers detailed comparative data on the number of deals and their value categorized into deal types, sub-sector and regions.
GlobalData derived the data presented in this report from proprietary in-house Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare eTrack deals database, and primary and secondary research.
- Financial Deals - Analysis of the company's financial deals including Mergers and Acquisitions, Equity/Debt Offerings, Private Equity, Venture Financing and Partnerships.
- Deals by Year - Chart and table displaying information encompassing the number of deals and value reported by the company by year, for a five year period.
- Deals by Type - Chart and table depicting information including the number of deals and value reported by the company by type such as Mergers and Acquisitions, Equity/Debt Offering etc.
- Deals by Region - Chart and table presenting information on the number of deals and value reported by the company by region, which includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa and South and Central America.
- Deals by Sub-sector - Chart and table showing information on the number of deals and value reported by the company, by sub-sector.
- Major Deals - Information on the company's major financial deals. Each such deal has a brief summary, deal type, deal rationale; and deal financials and target Companys (major public companies) key financial metrics and ratios.
- Business Description - A brief description of the company's operations.
- Key Employees - A list of the key executives of the company.
- Important Locations and Subsidiaries - A list and contact details of key centers of operation and subsidiaries of the company.
- Key Competitors - A list of the key competitors of the company.
- Key Recent Developments - A brief on recent news about the company.
Reasons to Buy
Get detailed information on the company's financial deals that enable you to understand the company's expansion/divestiture and fund requirements
- The profile enables you to analyze the company's financial deals by region, by year, by business segments and by type, for a five year period.
Understand the company's business segments' expansion / divestiture strategy
- The profile presents deals from the company's core business segments' perspective to help you understand its corporate strategy.
Access elaborate information on the company's recent financial deals that enable you to understand the key deals which have shaped the company
- Detailed information on major recent deals includes a summary of each deal, deal type, deal rationale, deal financials and Target Company's key financial metrics and ratios.
Equip yourself with detailed information about the companys operations to identify potential customers and suppliers.
- The profile analyzes the company's business structure, locations and subsidiaries, key executives and key competitors.
Stay up-to-date on the major developments affecting the company
- Recent developments concerning the company presented in the profile help you track important events.
Gain key insights into the company for academic or business research
- Key elements such as break up of deals into categories and information on detailed major deals are incorporated into the profile to assist your academic or business research needs.
Note*: Some sections may be missing if data is unavailable for the company.


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Featured Post
Is the new professionalism and ACP's new ethics really just about following guidelines?
The Charter ( Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium.A Physician's Charter) did not deal with just the important relationship of ...
Monday, October 11, 2010
More welcome light shined on the problems with the"New Professionalism"
Dr. Peredina discusses a lawsuit filed against CVS . Dr. Troyen Brennan is the CMO and executive vice-president of CVS Caremark. The following is a quote from the book "New Rules" which was written by Dr. Brennan and the current head of CMS Dr. Donald Berwick. They are discussing the physician patient relationship and say the following:
"Today, this isolated relationship is no longer tenable or possible… Traditional medical ethics, based on the doctor-patient dyad must be reformulated to fit the new mold of the delivery of health care...Regulation must evolve. Regulating for improved medical care involves designing appropriate rules with authority...Health care is being rationalized through critical pathways and guidelines. The primary function of regulation in health care, especially as it affects the quality of medical care, is to constrain decentralized individualized decision making."
In 2007,Dr. Brennan,then the executive vice president of Aetna cowrote an article in JAMA entitled "Managing Medical Resources. A return to the medical commons" which I blogged about ( see here) and I said in part:
"They speak of an abstract hypothetical " medical commons" and how the current emphasis by the physician on the welfare of the individual patient will spoil the commons much as the farmer who selfishly grazes his cattle on public land without regard for depleting the resource will destroy the resource.Physicians are implored to "reconstitute the medical commons" and think in terms of resource conservation and allocation so at the end the greatest medical good can be done for the greatest number of patients.They admit there is not currently such a commons. There never has been so I am unsure how a return is possible."
With this increasing constraint of decentralized individualized decision ( translation-individual docs advising individual patients about a course of action) someone else must make those decisions. Do you think the folks at insurance companies and pharmacy management companies might enjoy that role? Isn't it interesting that the head of CMS and the vice-president of a pharmacy management company share the same view of the "proper"role of the physician?
Also kudos to DrRich at his blog Covert Rationing Blog with this thoughtful and important criticism of the new medical ethics, in which the traditional physician patient relationship with its fiduciary duty of the physician is being replaced with a nebulous duty to society . Also DrRich-in his real life persona of Dr. Richard Fogoros- hosted a discussion on Sermo which from my vantage point was well received and he did an admirable job in fielding a variety of questions. It is instructive and worrisome that a number of the physicians writing in had not even heard about the New Professionalism. If you have not, go here to read about it in the original.
Also kudos to Dr. Beth Haynes at the blog Blackribbonproject for this entry concerning various aspects of the attack on the traditional physician-patient relationship.
This important topic deserves all the attention it can get.
7 comments:
- Doug Perednia, MD said...
Dr. Gaulte,
Thank you very much for your positive comments, but I must point out that you're a far better reporter than I am. I had no idea that Dr. Brennan is the CMO and EVP of CVS/Caremark, and had not tied this at all to his association with Dr. Berwick, who is now running CMS. This has some rather profound implications for the integrity of those pushing the "new medical ethics". Since the CVS/Caremark "healthcare nanny" program is clearly a medical intervention, it seems inconceivable that Dr. Brennan was unaware of its use of data which should have been protected and privileged information. He also could, should or ought to have been aware of the anti-competitive nature of CVS' healthcare nanny campaign. The implications are astonishing. This gentleman is insisting that 3rd parties have a place in the physician-patient relationship, only to immediately abuse that seat for private commercial purposes at the first opportunity.
Why shouldn't we now assume that the government, corporations or any 3rd party won't abuse their seat in the exam room at EVERY opportunity?
You can't make this stuff up. Thanks for putting 2 and 2 together!
- HaynesBE said...
Thank you for continuing to write on this very important topic--and congrats on your publication at KevinMD.
Thanks also for the recognition--although the link appears to be broken.
Beth Haynes
- Andrew_M_Garland said...
Mike: What treatment will I have?
Assigned Doctor: There is no need to bother you with the details. Rest assured that it balances your needs against those of Society and the limited resources available.
- james gaulte said...
Dr. Haynes-thanks for the comment.sorry about the link I think I may have fixed it now.
- Anonymous said...
Perhaps much of this is relevant and timely. However, the 500 pound gorilla that remains lurking over the head of every physician is an unrestrained tort system. Use of centralized decision-making does not guarantee universally positive outcomes. Without centralized protection from individual professional liability, physicians will never take these "new medical ethics" very seriously.
- james gaulte said...
Anonymous 8:42 You are right. A jury in a malpractice case may well not be convinced by some save money on your wife to benefit the ACO argument.Even less likely is that argument going to convince the patient's husband.
James Gaulte
- Anonymous said...
And the same Dr. Brennan was a committee member on the recent (Oct 5th)IOM report calling for the expansion of independent nurse practitioners. Here is a link to that report: